


A New (and slightly ridiculous) Hope

by Roadstergal



Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: F/M, Heroism, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Metro City needs a new hero.  Someone brave, honorable, bulletproof, photogenic, and possibly named Roxanne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New (and slightly ridiculous) Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tahanrien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahanrien/gifts).



> Thanks to the lovely Kahvi for the beta.

Minion poked at a loose arm-joint. It fell to the ground. "Er, boss? This just isn't working."

MegaMind flopped over the top of the creation with a sigh, tapping a wrench against it. "We _have_ to get it working!" he said, frustrated. "This is the third Gang-Buster-O-Matic we've tried; we can't let it suffer the fate of the Old-Lady-Protect-Bot!"

"Look." Minion spread his robotic claws. "We're not good people, you know. We don't do this 'good' thing," he waved his claws expressively, "very well."

MegaMind waved for a brain-bot to summon a chair to collapse in. He collapsed shortly before the chair arrived, then staggered back up into it. "Failure isn't an option. Roxanne requested a safer Metrocity, and a safer Metrocity we must have!"

Minion shook his fishy head. "We just kinda suck at it, though."

"Well. True enough." MegaMind frowned.

"You know who's good at it..." Minion looked at the gun hanging in the safe on the wall, charged with MetroMan's DNA.

"No!" MegaMind leapt to his feet. "You remember what happened last time!"

"Well, yeah, but think about who you gave it to."

"Exactly. We can't run the risk of giving that kind of power to just anyone!"

"I wasn't thinking of 'just anyone.' I was thinking," Minion grinned, "of a certain... cute... repoooorter..."

"Roxanne." MegaMind gnawed his lip. It made a lot of sense. Far too much sense. So much sense that he resented Minion coming up with the idea instead of him. "I don't know the shelf life of DNA . How do I know it hasn't gone off?"

"You could smell it," Minion suggested.

 

* * *

 

Roxanne smashed her hand down on the alarm button as soon as it blared its annoying beep at her. Oddly enough, it fell to pieces. "Quality isn't what it used to be," she muttered. She had probably hit it too hard. She felt run through the ringer, like she hadn't even slept. She _had_ stayed up far too late the night before, griping to her long-suffering friends. MegaMind was trying far too hard, in all the wrong ways. He had reasonably legitimate employment, and she had asked him to move in, but he kept focusing on ‘cleaning up the city’.

And he was _terrible_ at being the good guy.

Roxanne hauled herself out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. She squirted toothpaste on her toothbrush, and began to scrub. It was just so silly. He was trying to be something he wasn't, and wouldn't see she was happy with who he was...

Smoke began to pour out of the toothbrush. Roxanne pulled it out of her mouth, startled. It was on fire.

"Roxanne!" a familiar voice sang out. The voice of the one person who currently had a key to her apartment.

"MegaMind," she sighed, "what did you do?"

 

* * *

 

The powers were relatively standard, from what she remembered of MetroMan. Flight, strength, X-ray vision, super-speed, and that odd laser-eye thing. "I really don't need training," she reassured MegaMind, for the umpteenth time.

"Oh, oblige me," he sighed.

"Fine, go ahead. What are we doing _this_ time around?"

She did his obstacle course rapidly, zapping the bad-guy-bots, leapfrogging the deathrays, and grabbing the magic stone at the end, bouncing it in her hand impatiently as she waited at the end. MegaMind nodded, proudly. "I think you're ready."

"I was ready on Tuesday morning, when you first came by," she complained.

"Ah - but you did not have a Super Suit at the time!" MegaMind pulled it out, dramatically.

Roxanne frowned. "I am _not_ wearing that. Did you get that from Wicked Weasel?"

"Well..." MegaMind's face fell. "I can have Minion add a little to it."

 

* * *

 

"Would you stop pacing?" Minion sighed. "Play Xbox, I got the extra Kinect controller."

"I'm worried!" MegaMind threw his hands in the air. "She's gone for hours every night. Every night! And she never brings back a single criminal to jail! I knew I should have trained her longer."

Minion looked down at the controller in his hands. "Er, boss..."

MegaMind looked at Minion. "What?"

"Suppose she's..." Minion smacked his fish-lips uncertainly. "Suppose she's not out fighting crime."

MegaMind spun on his heel, facing Minion. "What are you saying?"

"Suppose she's seeing someone else?"

MegaMind threw back his head and laughed, a long, evil laugh. "Who else would she be seeing?"

"I dunno." Minion shrugged. "Someone less blue."

MegaMind paused while that drilled home, and his face fell. He flopped next to Minion on the couch. "She's seeing someone else, isn't she."

"Maybe."

"She's seeing Bernard."

"Maybe."

"Oh, god, what should I do?" MegaMind buried his head in his hands.

"Kidnap him?"

"That never works," MegaMind sighed, shaking his head. "That's super-villain talk, and I'm..." MegaMind sighed again, a long, heavy sigh. "I'm not a super-villain anymore."

"Oh." Minion sat back, trying to think. "Er, you could blast him with a death ray?"

"Super-villain."

"Shoot him into space?"

"Super-villain."

Minion's water started to steam from the effort of brainstorming. "I'm out of ideas."

"I suppose..." MegaMind frowned. "I suppose I could talk to her."

Minion jumped to his feet so aggressively that the couch tumbled, taking MegaMind with it. "That's crazy!"

"Yes," MegaMind agreed, staggering to his feet. "But it just might work."

 

* * *

 

It was a little mean to spy, MegaMind knew. But he was still a little mean, after all, and what good was an invisible car if you didn't use it to spy on people?

Roxanne's night as Justice Gal had started innocently enough. A kid stole an old woman's purse. Justice Gal grabbed him, hauling him along as she returned the purse to the old woman. And looked damn fine doing it, MegaMind opined. It was a perfect bit of MetroMan-like heroism. Small-scale, of course, but you had to start small. The next step was to take the kid to jail...

But she didn't. She sat next to him on the curb step, apparently deep in conversation. MegaMind sang some songs, tapped the dash, and ran out for a frozen yogurt. She was still there, talking. Finally, he left the confines of the car and walked over. "Is this the longest Miranda reading in history?"

Justice Gal looked up at him, annoyed, if her body language was any indication. "MegaMind, meet Stewart."

"Hello, Stewart. Jail is all right. Just avoid the pepper steak on Fridays."

"I'm not taking him to jail," she said, stubbornly.

MegaMind frowned. "Are you insane?"

Justice Gal put a hand protectively on Stewart's arm, preventing him from jumping up and running, which he looked like he wanted to do. "Tell the blue man what you told me , Stewart."

"Well." The boy looked down. "I wanna join a gang, you know, because I ain't got no other way to get ahead. And the gang, they took care of my mom when my dad died. They told me I had to steal some sh... some stuff. So I did."

"You see the problem?" Justice Gal asked.

"Yes, I see the problem. That's a terrible story, and I feel bad for the kid, now. If you had just taken him to jail, like I said, we never would have heard it, and we'd both be happier."

"Oh," Justice Gal sighed. She patted Stewart on the shoulder. "I'll be by tomorrow, all right? Just like I said." She stood up, hands on hips, glaring down MegaMind as the boy ran off.

MegaMind turned, throwing his hands in the air. "I can't make a single proper hero, can I?"

Justice Gal sighed, pulling off her mask. She hugged MegaMind. "Look - what you did was really sweet, and I appreciate the sentiment. But the petty crime here - it doesn't need a superhero to haul people to jail. Stewart needs after-school programs and a shot at a real future. Tim needs rehab so he can hold down a real job instead of sneaking cough syrup from convenience stores. Trina needs computer training so she doesn't do - those things she's doing."

MegaMind frowned. "I don't get it."

"That's all right. Can you set up something flashy tomorrow that I can stop? Like... getting the brain-bots to steal that big diamond that's inexplicably being kept in the museum this month? I need some publicity, so I can talk to the mayor into letting me set up some of these programs. We could really change Metro City for the better!"

"I still don't get it."

"That's all right." Roxanne kissed his ear.

 

* * *

 

"I don't think I like heights," MegaMind tried to keep his voice steady.

"It's all right, I have you!" Roxanne replied, brightly.

"We're _very_ high up."

"Yes, doesn't the city look beautiful! Like a jewel."

"Like a tiny, tiny, far-away jewel..." MegaMind shivered.

"Oh, are you cold? Sorry, honey - we'll go back to my apartment. The goose should be done, by now, and if it isn't, I'll use my heat vision to finish it."

"No - I will use my quantum lasers to finish it!" MegaMind protested. They had turned out to be absolutely useless as a weapon, but they heated food faster than any microwave, and didn't make the food rubbery. The DOD had dropped his grant, but the Sunbeam corporation was paying him handsomely.

"All right," she agreed. She was rather good, really, about using her powers sparingly. Perhaps that was the difference between a superhero and a supervillain, MegaMind pondered - moderation.

That being said, taking her boyfriend up to the boundary of the troposphere to look at Christmas lights was perhaps not the pinnacle of moderation. Oh, well, it made her happy. And him, too, come to that.

"Merry Christmas, MegaMind," she murmured in his ear as they descended.

"Bah humbug," he replied, joyfully.


End file.
